Page 10 of I’ll Be There (Montana Fire #4)

Ambush, wild-goose chase, pure gold information—the what-ifs cycled through his brain as Conner received his passport back from the border control official and the welcome nod for him and his passengers to pass into Canada.

“I’ve never been to Canada,” Romeo said. “Eh?”

The kid—although, at twenty, he could be called a young man—sat between Pete and Reuben in the back seat, a tight fit that certainly must have Pete and Reuben wondering why they hadn’t shot the idea down the moment John raised it.

Probably because no one truly thought anyone named Blue would show up.

He was chasing down a ghost.

Aw, he shouldn’t be doing this.

Not after the way Liza had looked at him last night-slash-early this morning at her pottery shed. Could you—

What? Stay?

Help?

He’d nearly turned his truck around last night, the unsettled sense that under her healed scars, and despite her smile, Liza still felt breakable.

I’m fine.

Hmm.

“So, we’re really going to Fort William?” Micah said, finishing off his cup of coffee from the Java Cup.

“Yep,” Conner said, glancing at him. Surreal to see his buddy sitting there, as if no time had stretched between them. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked with Micah. Maybe not even when his grandfather passed, although he’d been in a dark place then.

Liza’s letters had tugged him free, back into the light.

“I thought that was just something you were telling the girls.”

“What did you think we had on the agenda? A strip club?”

Micah laughed. “Hardly. But maybe skeet shooting, or, I dunno, skydiving.”

“We jump out of planes for a living,” Reuben said from the back seat. “Although, I wouldn’t mind a jump right about now. Space.” He had his arms tucked in, his body wedged next to the door.

The highway north of the border into Thunder Bay ran through lush pine and balsam forest before it thinned out.

They passed a cheese farm, a winery, and finally came into the city, following the signs onto Broadway, then into the old fort, carved out of a thick swath of forest on a strut of land encircled by the Kaministiquia River.

Conner parked, and the occupants all but fell out.

The sun hung high and Conner checked his watch.

They’d lost an hour, moving ahead in time. Nearly noon already.

He glanced at Pete. “Keep an eye on Romeo.” He ignored Pete’s frown and jogged up to the information building.

Micah kept up with him. “Okay, what’s up? I’ve never seen you this excited to visit a historical monument . Really want to watch a guy hammer a wheel into shape, do you?”

Conner held open the door, glanced back. Reuben and Pete were a good twenty feet behind them.

He scuttled inside and motioned Micah to the vestibule. “I’m here to meet someone—a girl—”

“What?”

Conner held up his hand. “It’s a contact. Someone who says she has information about my brother’s murder.”

Micah just blinked at him, but Conner saw the gauges turning. “Someone from the Sons of Freedom?”

“Apparently. She had my brother’s burner phone, and when Liza sent that global text, she answered it. Said someone was after her—”

“Seriously? Conner. Who is this person?”

“Her name is Harmony Blue. She was supposedly his partner. I called my brother’s case investigator to ask about her, but I only got through to his voicemail.”

They moved aside as a group of kids came through the doors, tickets in hand. Some wore coonskin caps, in character for the trading post.

Micah glanced at them, then at Reuben, Pete, and Romeo, now reaching the sidewalk. “Do they know?”

“Except for Romeo.”

“No wonder you didn’t want him to join us. Okay, so I guess I’ll hang back, keep an eye out.”

See, this was how God showed up—he sent Jim Micah to watch his back.

“I don’t know what she looks like. Maybe a biker chick?”

“Where is she meeting you—hey guys.” Micah stepped away from him as Romeo and the guys came in, but Conner answered him fast in a shrug.

Micah caught it, gave him an almost imperceptible nod, and somehow it loosened the knot in Conner’s gut. Just a little.

They bought tickets and walked up the path to the gate.

Conner had grabbed a brochure, studied the layout, the map.

It seemed a strange place to meet, with the wide-open spaces, the fence that circled the stockade.

Forty-two buildings, a small farm, and an Ojibwa village made up the grounds.

Although a reconstruction of the original fort, Conner still stepped back in time as he walked through the fort gates, past timber-framed buildings labeled antiquated names like the Apothecary and the Wintering House.

He stood for a moment in the middle of a row of buildings—the corn stores—not sure what to do next.

Groups of tourists—families with children in hand, a cluster of women wearing fanny packs, a few young couples—milled about the area, talking to the era-attired blacksmiths, coopers, tinsmiths, furriers, and beaded Ojibwa actors.

“Um, so, do we...spread out?” Pete said, glancing at him.

“I dunno. I think...yeah. Let’s just wander around.” He glanced at Reuben. “Maybe you stay here, near the entrance, in case—”

Reuben nodded. Good, because Conner hadn’t a clue how he might finish that sentence.

Romeo and Pete headed off down the trail toward the naval yard.

Micah had moved away from him, as if he might be by himself.

Conner folded the map, put it in his back pocket. Now he just felt stupid. Super idea, meeting here. But his brain had conjured no other ideas, and frankly, he’d feared Blue simply hanging up.

He wandered over to a blacksmith and watched a demonstration, searching the crowd.

A few kids kneeled at the front as the smith heated metal in a fire, then hammered it flat on an anvil, sparks flying.

He moved away and watched a cooper stretch a piece of metal around a cask head, talking to an interested group of blue-hairs.

At the infirmary, a man displayed the medicines and surgical tools of the time. He held up a jar of leeches to a couple of ten-year-old girls. “And you know what we use these for?”

Conner left, walking out into the sunshine. Checked his watch. Ten minutes after the hour.

He spotted Micah standing near the outfits building.

“Excuse me, sir?”

He turned, and one of the girls was handing him a map, not unlike the one he’d stuck in his pocket. “You dropped this.”

His hand went to his back pocket. “Um, no—”

“Oh,” she said. “The lady at the hospital said it was yours. I told her I’d give it to you.”

“What lady?”

She turned, searching. “Oh. She’s gone...”

“Yeah, that’s mine,” he said and took the map. “Thanks.”

He opened it and found a building icon circled in blue pen.

The fur stores. He walked across the square and stood at the entrance of the building. Sable, raccoon, fox, rabbit, and even bear fur hung from the rafters, drying, in display. The place bore the redolence of dust, tanning oil, and leather.

But not a living soul.

He glanced at the map.

Turned to go.

A woman stood in front of him. Short black hair, pale blue-green eyes. She wore a sleeveless tank top, a pair of jeans, and Cons, a satchel over her shoulder. “Come with me.”

Not daring to glance around to check on Micah—he didn’t need to—Conner followed her around the building to the back, an unpopulated area near the eastern wall. A fort flag fluttered overhead. They stood in the shadow of another building, the sign reading Powder Magazine.

Apropos.

“You look like him,” she said bluntly without preamble. “Except he had darker hair. But the same nose, the same jaw. And you give off the same vibe—wary, as if you’re used to getting hurt.” She pursed her lips. “I won’t hurt you, if you don’t hurt me.”

He stared at her. Gave her a quick nod. “You’re Blue?”

“My name’s actually Harmony, but your brother, he called me Blue, so...”

“Tell me how you know Justin.”

She was younger than he’d imagined, small boned, and not a little edgy as she ran her hands up her bare arms. “He saved my life.”

That, of course, he could believe. But, “How?”

She wiped her hand across her cheek. “I just can’t believe he’s dead—I mean, I knew that.

..well, he was trying to keep me safe by not contacting me, but.

..” She closed her eyes. Took a breath. “Okay. Yes.” She swallowed, met Conner’s eyes.

“I wasn’t part of the group—Kayle O’Brien, the leader, and some of his guys used to come into the Lucky Seven—it’s a bar my parents owned.

I sometimes waited on them, and Kayle liked me.

I didn’t know what he was into until our bar got raided—torched by the FBI.

I was in the back, trapped, and Justin—he rescued me.

And then suddenly I was in the SOF, traveling with them, being absorbed into their group.

They called themselves patriots, but really they were anarchists.

Protesters, but also gun runners, and occasionally I’d hear something about domestic terrorism. ”

All this Conner knew about the SOF—at least from his own research. “Justin wasn’t really one of them,” he said, testing the waters.

“I know. He...he told me. It was one night when Kayle had tried to—” She shook her head, as if casting the memory away. “Justin wouldn’t let him touch me. I think he must have had feelings for me by then. He started telling me that I should leave.”

She gave him a soft look. “I fell in love with your brother. He is—was—a good man. I know he didn’t like what Kayle and the other guys—and there were women too—were doing. There were a lot of drugs, but he never used like they did. And...he was gentle with me.”

Conner didn’t know what to do with her story, with words like used like they did or gentle with me ...because it intimated more than he wanted to know about his brother.

The compromises he’d had to make for what he believed in.